Epilogue
Many hundreds of years later, when the fields of Valdemar had given way to rolling hills and the fully-tamed Pelagiris was so far a memory that people assumed its former magic to be the superstition of their uncivilized ancestors, the city of Haven was no more. Its buildings lay in crumbled ruins beneath a new city, founded they say by a pair of twins found with an unusually intelligent wolf. The people loved their horses still, cared for them, depended on them, and they particularly loved pure white horses although no one could quite remember why. Raptors flew above the city, and the people captured some and flew them in order to help with the hunt; if some of them were slightly larger than others, well, that was seen as a good omen. The idea that there was no one true way, and the tolerance of all religions had morphed into the adoption of all religions, but the people all had some reference to a female goddess of the earth with stars in her eyes. Sometimes she went by the name Gaia, sometimes Hera, sometimes Isis or Demeter. But she was always there. They also almost all saw the sun as the representative of some god or another, and he also had many names; Apollo, Ra, Helios, Sol.
Most of the beliefs and practices of Valdemar and her surrounding countries had been forgotten. This city did not merely establish diplomacy with new civilizations, it absorbed them into itself, and not always peacefully. Its leaders were not guided by any wisdom of a Companion, but by advisors and Councils that were not any better or any worse than any Council made up of mortals. Sometimes their motives were good, and they made decisions benefitting the people; sometimes their motives were selfish, and they made decisions benefitting themselves. Sometimes the issues were more complicated, and there was no decision that could make everyone happy; those were the most common kind, because life is messy and complicated and the only thing guaranteed by having more than one person in a room is the fact that they will not agree. But the people prospered, and they expanded, and they built roads and buildings and water transport systems the world had never seen before.
One day, on the banks of a river no longer called Terilee, a young girl with dark hair and tanned skin was walking. She sat down under a tree to rest; this tree was very old, she knew, because first, her papa had told her so and second, it was so large that its branches almost spanned the entire river. She began to play in the dirt at the base of this tree, and she built a castle in the mud. While she was digging, she found something peculiar; there were two strands of silver chain, each a necklace. They were laced together, one to the other, so that they would never come apart from each other. There seemed to be feathers stuck in the links; the girl found this to be odd, but didn't think much of it. The chains seemed to have been made well, but long ago; she didn't know a lot about silversmithing, but her papa was a silversmith, and these did not look like the chains he made. They seemed solid though, and she rather liked them; so she picked them up.
When she did, she noticed that each of them had a charm on it. One charm was an odd pairing of an eagle and a mountain cat; the other was an equally odd charm of that same mountain cat with a horse. She took the necklaces to the river and washed them. The feathers washed away into the river, and so did the dirt; the silver shone, now, and the girl could see that while the style was very different from what her papa made, these necklaces were very well made. She liked them. She decided she would keep the necklace with the horse and cat on it, and the other she would give to her best friend, a little blonde girl who was so shy she didn't have any other friends. She was the daughter of the chief, who planned on using the eagle as the new city's totem; that made the necklace appropriate. The daughter of a silversmith was not supposed to be friends with the daughter of the chief, but they couldn't help it; they liked each other right away. It was as if an unseen force was drawing them together; but the girl supposed that was just her imagination running wild again. She would give her friend the necklace, though. That way, they would be best friends forever.